The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 3 eBook

Thus have we seen the patient virtues of the long-suffering
Hermione rewarded. That excellent lady lived
many years with her Leontes and her Perdita, the happiest
of mothers and of queens.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

(By Mary Lamb)

There lived in the palace at Messina two ladies, whose
names were Hero and Beatrice. Hero was the daughter,
and Beatrice the niece, of Leonato, the governor of
Messina.

Beatrice was of a lively temper, and loved to divert
her cousin Hero, who was of a more serious disposition,
with her sprightly sallies. Whatever was going
forward was sure to make matter of mirth for the light-hearted
Beatrice.

At the time the history of these ladies commences,
some young men of high rank in the army, as they were
passing through Messina on their return from a war
that was just ended, in which they had distinguished
themselves by their great bravery, came to visit Leonato.
Among these were Don Pedro, the prince of Arragon;
and his friend Claudio, who was a lord of Florence;
and with them came the wild and witty Benedick, and
he was a lord of Padua.

These strangers had been at Messina before, and the
hospitable governor introduced them to his daughter
and his niece as their old friends and acquaintance.

Benedick, the moment he entered the room, began a
lively conversation with Leonato and the prince.
Beatrice, who liked not to be left out of any discourse,
interrupted Benedick with saying, “I wonder that
you will still be talking, signior Benedick; nobody
marks you.” Benedick was just such another
rattle-brain as Beatrice, yet he was not pleased at
this free salutation: he thought it did not become
a well-bred lady to be so flippant with her tongue;
and he remembered, when he was last at Messina, that
Beatrice used to select him to make her merry jests
upon. And as there is no one who so little likes
to be made a jest of as those who are apt to take
the same liberty themselves, so it was with Benedick
and Beatrice; these two sharp wits never met in former
times but a perfect war of raillery was kept up between
them, and they always parted mutually displeased with
each other. Therefore when Beatrice stopped him
in the middle of his discourse with telling him nobody
marked what he was saying, Benedick, affecting not
to have observed before that she was present, said,
“What, my dear lady Disdain, are you yet living?”
And now war broke out afresh between them, and a long
jangling argument ensued, during which Beatrice, although
she knew he had so well approved his valour in the
late war, said that she would eat all he had killed
there: and observing the prince take delight
in Benedick’s conversation, she called him “the
prince’s jester.” This sarcasm sunk
deeper into the mind of Benedick than all Beatrice
had said before. The hint she gave him that he
was a coward, by saying she would eat all he had killed,
he did not regard, knowing himself to be a brave man:
but there is nothing that great wits so much dread
as the imputation of buffoonery, because the charge
comes sometimes a little too near the truth; therefore
Benedick perfectly hated Beatrice, when she called
him “the prince’s jester.”